It will soon be Halloween folks and, as usual, the media and stores are filled with suggestions on what costumes to avoid, what costumes will be most popular, Halloween volcanoes, and tons of yummy candy.

Just to get in to the spirit of the season, I’d like to share a ghost story I read in today’s Charlotte Observer about a family who rented a house in Concord, North Carolina, and found that they were not alone. Greta Garbo would have hated it.

It’s much more than a “things that go bump in the night” narrative and may even give us all something to consider as we get ready for Trick-or-Treat.

The story began on Christmas Eve 2009, four months after the Bostick family moved in to their rental home, when their toddler claimed that there was a ghost in the living room. From that point on, the paranormal activity started to advance from the kind of weird things one usually attributes to the imagination to more forceful poltergeist activity, when the noises got louder and lights would go on and off and their toddler refused to sleep in his bed.

The decision to vacate the premises came closer when Angela Bostick felt the mattress shift as though someone was sitting on the end of the bed, followed a few nights later when the ghost crawled into bed beside her and her husband in the middle of the night.

One morning in January 2010 the final decision was made to move on and leave those behind who hadn’t when “it” held Bostwick down on the bed with the covers over her head, terrified and unable to move or breath. She was only released when her husband walked in. It took a month for the family to move out and, during that time, Mrs. Bostwick opted to sit in her car every day until her husband came home.

Quite a story. Folks in Scotland used to say don’t eat too much cheese before you go to sleep or you’ll have wild dreams and see ghosts. The Scots tend to be a little fey when it comes to ghost stories and the following traditional Scottish prayer is evidence of this:

“From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!”

If you’d like to read the article written by Mark Price, click on Charlotte Observer. And, by the way, there’s more stories like this to be published up until Halloween.